NPR is a good source. They maintain an old school approach to journalism. Yes, they screwed up with Juan Williams, but that was not representative, and frankly he was looking for controversy. He did quite well off of the outrage. 
I actually do go to Al-Jazeera for news on occasion. However, I find myself oddly unwilling to disclose this information. I know that at least 90% of my coworkers, friends, and family would look at me askance for engaging in such questionable behavior.
At one point I told someone that you couldn't trust our news and that Al-Jazeera was a refreshing alternative to the pre-packaged news bites we get served in the UK and US.
They looked at me and said, "How can you listen to that, isn't it all just propaganda?"
lol the irony.
To me the BBC is just CNN in the UK and NPR is okay but isn't really a hardcore news source since they will never get the funding or tacit approval to challenge the ownership class' propaganda machine.
NPR is better than many other news sources, but that doesn't make them good. Their steadfast refusal, for instance, to use the word torture for a practice that we executed people for using in WW2 is impossible to overlook.
My liking for the BBC has dropped off sharply after their breathless cheering for the Libya conflict, carefully omitting that NATO explicitly violated what it said it would do. We said 'impose a no fly zone', but what we actually DID was to conduct a full air war.
Well, you certainly didn't hear any reports of Libyan aircraft in the skies after that, did you? 
MISSION [size=2]CREEP[/size] ACCOMPLISHED.
Heh... and then even yesterday they had some analyst on praising the decision and how many lives were saved by overthrowing Gaddafi. That might be true, but the analyst's representation that it 'was the will of the international community' was patently false, and the West's collective misrepresentation of the scope of what we'd do means that there's no way that China or Russia will allow any more of that nonsense to happen under the umbrella of the U.N.
If they'd stuck to what they'd agreed, Libya would likely still be a problem, but we'd have a shaky consensus on being able to prevent other tragedies elsewhere. We traded away what could have been the foundation for some kind of real peace in the world, so that Britain and France could grab Libya's oil.
I don't really blame the US for this one, by the way. This appears to have been largely France's idea, with Britain's enthusiastic cooperation.
Well, what'd you expect them to do after we commandeered Iraq and Afghanistan (mostly Iraq, since we have to share Afghanistan) for our own interests? They want a piece of that tasty petroleum pie too!
Heh... and then even yesterday they had some analyst on praising the decision and how many lives were saved by overthrowing Gaddafi. That might be true, but the analyst's representation that it 'was the will of the international community' was patently false, and the West's collective misrepresentation of the scope of what we'd do means that there's no way that China or Russia will allow any more of that nonsense to happen under the umbrella of the U.N.
I'm flashing back to Pravda bemoaning the West's intervention in yet another Worker's Paradise... Don't the Libyans count for anything? Of all people here, I figured you'd be behind getting rid of a dictator by supporting a home-grown insurgency. Are you so driven by the narrative that you can't even celebrate the good that comes out of the change?
Malor wrote:My liking for the BBC has dropped off sharply after their breathless cheering for the Libya conflict, carefully omitting that NATO explicitly violated what it said it would do. We said 'impose a no fly zone', but what we actually DID was to conduct a full air war.
Well, you certainly didn't hear any reports of Libyan aircraft in the skies after that, did you?
MISSION [size=2]CREEP[/size] ACCOMPLISHED.
I lol'd
My liking for the BBC has dropped off sharply after their breathless cheering for the Libya conflict, carefully omitting that NATO explicitly violated what it said it would do. We said 'impose a no fly zone', but what we actually DID was to conduct a full air war.
Technically imposing a no fly zone necessitates significant ground operations. From what I've heard from friends in the military and private sector, simply preventing enemy aircraft from flying would be ineffective. Logistics, defenses and key military installations have to be neutralized, otherwise the task of keeping planes on the ground and maintaining the safety of allied aircraft would be difficult. In other words, a "no fly zone" necessarily equates to a "full air war."
I really like HDNet news, Dan Rathers Reports and Vanguard. I think these are some of the best on television.
Malor wrote:My liking for the BBC has dropped off sharply after their breathless cheering for the Libya conflict, carefully omitting that NATO explicitly violated what it said it would do. We said 'impose a no fly zone', but what we actually DID was to conduct a full air war.
Technically imposing a no fly zone necessitates significant ground operations. From what I've heard from friends in the military and private sector, simply preventing enemy aircraft from flying would be ineffective. Logistics, defenses and key military installations have to be neutralized, otherwise the task of keeping planes on the ground and maintaining the safety of allied aircraft would be difficult. In other words, a "no fly zone" necessarily equates to a "full air war."
I would totally buy that if we were enforcing a no fly zone of Russia, or China, or a few other countries. I think that once you get to Libya the difficulty of keeping their planes out of the sky starts to diminish.
re you so driven by the narrative that you can't even celebrate the good that comes out of the change?
In other words, don't the short-term benefits outweigh the long-term consequences?
I think the Syrians would disagree, since they now will get no help from the UN. Likewise the Egyptians. Russia and China will now absolutely prevent any approval of military force whatsoever, because we outright lied.
Don't lies bother you, Robear? Or is it okay to lie to get what you want, as long as you're lying to people you consider bad?
I don't have any problem with what we actually did in Libya. I have very strong issues with doing it under false pretenses.
Grubber788 wrote:Malor wrote:My liking for the BBC has dropped off sharply after their breathless cheering for the Libya conflict, carefully omitting that NATO explicitly violated what it said it would do. We said 'impose a no fly zone', but what we actually DID was to conduct a full air war.
Technically imposing a no fly zone necessitates significant ground operations. From what I've heard from friends in the military and private sector, simply preventing enemy aircraft from flying would be ineffective. Logistics, defenses and key military installations have to be neutralized, otherwise the task of keeping planes on the ground and maintaining the safety of allied aircraft would be difficult. In other words, a "no fly zone" necessarily equates to a "full air war."
I would totally buy that if we were enforcing a no fly zone of Russia, or China, or a few other countries. I think that once you get to Libya the difficulty of keeping their planes out of the sky starts to diminish.
Sure, but Libya's military wasn't the worst in Africa. I could imagine any China or Russia-bought AA-equipment or helicopters could pose a threat.
Does it make sense from a practical point of view? Probably not, but I suspect NATO has protocol that it must follow (even if such protocol was written during the Cold War...)
Other than cobbling together news from various sources and taking into account the bias I read and watch Al Jazeera and NPR/PBS. Not sure you can do much better these days. Sometimes the Economist...
I think the best thing you can do is broaden your list of sources. I follow Michelle Malkin's blog, for example - not because of the often odious content, but because it is a microcosm of the "Islamo-fascist" neocon point of view. When you compare the sources and the stories, it's much easier to separate the opinion from the facts. You also gain a feel for how various sources pitch their biases so that you can detect those biases in random content you encounter.
Heres another Ron Paul/CNN incident. This time they pose a ridiculous 'gotcha' question that has no bearing or relevance to the issues or campaign. Dana Bash is married to John King and the two have previously voiced their "worry" on air of Paul's momentum.
...then they edit it and spin it to their liking.
Of course what they don't mention is that during the previous stop, the media crowd was so bad that Paul's wife was shoved around, and they literally wouldn't let him leave. He's absolutely right - the media in that instance was so focused on him that they made things not only dangerous for other people, but pushed the actual voters to the sidelines.
Don't lies bother you, Robear? Or is it okay to lie to get what you want, as long as you're lying to people you consider bad?
Wow, way to keep things impersonal. Classy.
Here's another Ron Paul/CNN incident. This time they pose a ridiculous 'gotcha' question that has no bearing or relevance to the issues or campaign. Dana Bash is married to John King and the two have previously voiced their "worry" on air of Paul's momentum.
(videos here)
Actually, I think they protected Paul there--they could have shown the part where he started pointing at her and he walked off. Instead they cut out while he was laughing.
Sorry guys, you're over-reacting. This is no Howard Dean scream. That's not even the final clip of him they play in the segment: the final clip is him talking about vintage Ron Paul: just because I don't like something doesn't mean I want the government to regulate it because then government turns into an auction. She then says "as a Libertarian he's conflicted" between something he doesn't like and using the government to regulate it. The segment ends with her saying 'people applauded him when he says big government is not the answer to our problems'.
(edit to remove Cleveland tourism guide)
I'm an independent, and I'm not really backing anyone for the next election, so you can consider me one of the average, only partially informed citizens. Keeping that in mind, even before I saw the uncut version of the (topic) interview, I thought Borger was being more aggravating than journalistic. I'd be annoyed as heck, too, if I were constantly asked the same dang questions over and over - it's insulting, especially when your own network has already flogged the dead horse.
After viewing the uncut version, I wasn't surprised. And I didn't blame Paul in the least for wanting to terminate the inane inquisition. If people want to evidence him a liar for money made off of publications from the past, they need to do some actual journalistic research and go from there... instead of, "People wanna know about this, even though you've responded to it a dozen times in a clear manner". Just IMO. ^_^;
E: This is a little OT to the CNN clip. I'm posting it here as a response to the "well, where should we get our news from?" thread that's developed. Let me know if it's too OT and I'll move it.
When evaluating the media, I think it's worth drawing the distinction between news gathering and news analysis. The world has no shortage of quality news-gathering. Quite the opposite -- the scarce resource is quality analysis and filtering of the pile of data to form an accurate picture that we feel comfortable acting on.
IMO, mainstream journalism mostly misses the boat because it pretends it is unbiased. No one is unbiased. The result is either view from nowhere syndrome ("Some people say A, others say B. Welp, see ya.") or "cryptobiases" that taint the utility of anything they produce. The poster child for the latter is Fox (though the "crypto" part is the barest fig leaf there), but I've grown increasingly disgusted with CNN, the major networks and NPR, as the Lisa Simeone incident shows. (Note that in the second piece I link to, the author perceives that NPR has an "ethical dilemma" in keeping her on. I have more of an ethical dilemma with encouraging reporters to keep their biases hidden from the public, manifesting themselves in both conscious and unconscious ways behind the scenes. He and NPR are blind to this concern.)
Personally, my response to this is to search out bloggers that are also experts in specific fields of interest (economics and finance, public policy topics, regions of the world), and let them read the news so I (mostly) don't have to. Most bloggers are transparent about their opinions, so you know what kind of spin you'll get. (Avoid anyone who isn't.) They also get into it with each other, which makes me more confident that I'll hear many facets of an issue. And if you pick experts, you're reading experts. Why learn about things from journalists when you can read analysis from people who live and work in a field every day?
The big caveat is that you can easily pick only bloggers that reinforce your worldview, but that can be mitigated if you care to do it. You have the information you need to make a trust decision. By contrast, there's no telling whether the guy putting the package together in CNN's offline studio is slanted toward the left, or toward the right, or toward getting a reaction.
93_confirmed wrote:Here's another Ron Paul/CNN incident. This time they pose a ridiculous 'gotcha' question that has no bearing or relevance to the issues or campaign. Dana Bash is married to John King and the two have previously voiced their "worry" on air of Paul's momentum.
(videos here)
Actually, I think they protected Paul there--they could have shown the part where he started pointing at her and he walked off. Instead they cut out while he was laughing.
I also thought that was fairly edited.
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